Houdini Galaxy Tutorial – Part One

Originally I had been worried about this tutorial as it had stated in the description that you needed previous knowledge before attempting this tutorial but didn’t specify exactly how much knowledge was required so I wen’t on a limb and got it anyway and I must say to this stage It has been worth every penny.

To begin with the first step of this tutorial is to place a circle on the origin and then change the radius to increase the size of the circle. The orientation was also edited to ZX so that the circle would appear to be on its side. I then created a scatter node in the network view and attached this to the circle node this then shows the particles to be in the appearance of the circle I created previously. (tab menu_ Scatter node)

Adding a scatter node.

Preview of particles from a different angle.

I then include an add node into the network by using the tab menu and typing in add and placing the node on the network. This current network view is on the geometry level within the object level. The add node was then edited to add a particle system which was turned on by a checkbox shown in the image below.

The first image shows the circle with the display particle origins button selected as when I previewed my add node nothing appeared for me like it did in the tutorial this turned out to be due to open GL versions. The computer I am using uses open GL 1.1 and the computer the lecturer is using has open GL 2.1 hence why he could see the particles and I couldn’t. I done a little bit of research and tried to find a download for 2.1 but soon discovered that the Open Gl version your computer is running is the highest one by default based on the computers hardware so no biggy I just used a different method of viewing my particles (display particle origins ) as display points would not function correctly.

In the next image there is a popnet node which is a POPNetwork that I have created using the tab menu in order to determine how the particles will move. I had to select the option for an old PopNetwork as the newer versions has a lot of new features that Im unsure how to use and I prefer to follow the tutorial in the exact same way. The popnet node is the attached to the add node to make it part of the network.

Display particle origins option.

Creation Of PopNetwork.

The next stage was to dive down into my POP Network (popnet node) and then click on the node called popsource1 which is on the source tab I then had to edit the geometry source from use parameter values which allows you to choose your own source to Use First Context Geometry which uses the first piece of geometry available. I also had to change the emission type from surfaces to points as I am working with points acting as particles.

Remaining on the source node I then need to navigate to the Birth tab and change the following parameters. The Const Activation needs to be increased from 0 to 1. I also need to type in the following expression for the impulse Activation parameters $FF == 1Another expression was required for the Impulse Birth Rate npoints(“../../TO_POPS”) This has converted all of the points into particles and will control the rate of which the particles are born into the simulation.